Nixon and Mao; McCain and "Ahmadinenene"

By: Lowell
Published On: 9/27/2008 9:10:54 AM

Last night, John McCain specifically mentioned Richard Nixon's trip to China, apparently as an example of why we should NOT meet with Iran's loony leader "Ahmadinenene" (that's how McCain said it, his real name is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). While I agree that Ahmadinejad is heinous, I'm puzzled that McCain would site a meeting between an American president and Mao Zedong as a reason not to meet with him. I mean, sure, Ahmadinejad is despicable, but how about Mao?

...many of Mao's socio-political programs such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are blamed by critics from both within and outside China for causing severe damage to the culture, society, economy and foreign relations of China, as well as a probable death toll in the tens of millions.

Also, see here for some thoughts on the question, "Who was the Bloodiest Tyrant of the 20th Century?" (40 million deaths caused by Mao)

And here:

It may come as a surprise to find Mao Tse-tung is next in line as this century's greatest murderers, but this would only be because the full extent of communist killing in China under his leadership has not been widely known in the West. Hitler and Pol Pot are of course among these bloody tyrants and as for the others whose names may appear strange, their megamurders are described in detail in Death By Governments. The monstrous bloodletting of at least these nine men should be entered into a Hall of Infamy. Their names should forever warn us of the deadly potential of Power.

That's who Richard Nixon met when he went to China in 1972. Is John McCain really arguing that Mahmoud However-You-Pronounce-His-Last-Name is more vile than Mao Zedong, who ranks with Hitler and Stalin (and Pol Pot) as one of the worst mass murderers in human history? Well, alrighty then!


Comments



Iran (South County - 9/27/2008 9:32:47 AM)
Obama made a good point that the President of Iran is not the most powerful person in Iran.  The "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khamenei is the person at the top of the pyramid in the Iranian Government.


Right, although he's bad enough. (Lowell - 9/27/2008 9:39:09 AM)
Still, the overall point is that you shouldn't be afraid to negotiate with anyone, but that does NOT mean you "appease" them or are "soft" in any way. Again, Nixon went to China, also held summits with the Soviet Union's leader, Leonid Brezhnev. George HW Bush sent envoys to meet with scumbag Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush has sent envoys to meet with Kim Jong Il, about as evil a man as you can get.  How many more examples do we need?


All McCain has (jsrutstein - 9/27/2008 11:11:10 AM)
I doubt a sufficient number of undecided voters can be educated adequately about Iran before Election Day.  I also doubt Obama will be able to bait McCain into basically promising to bomb Iran if he's elected.  What really alarms me is that I wouldn't put it past Bush to bomb Iran as an October surprise.  I hope Murray Waas' scoop about Gonzalez ratting out Bush is true, and Bush is too scared about being prosecuted for what he's already done to commit a war crime like bombing Iran.


McCain's anger (Teddy - 9/27/2008 11:30:30 AM)
Everyone, friend or foe, agrees that McCain came across as combative and angry. Aside from the fact that attitude  apparently is his modus operandi, do you suppose that he decided (or his handlers decided) that the general population is very angry, too, mostly about Wall Street and the bailout, and the intention was to reflect that anger, showing voters that McCain was in synch with them? That was what I thought McC tried to convey, and he also tried to turn that anger into anger toward Obama every chance he could. And the lies, the flipflops, the repeated phony forcefulness he employed to emphasize his care for veterans... essentially, he tried to mug the military with "love." I have the idea that in another venue he would have been shouting like talk radio.


undecideds (jsrutstein - 9/27/2008 1:04:22 PM)
CBS conducted a poll of undecided voters, which included voters who had a preference, but said they could change their minds.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/...

Obama went up five points after the debate from where he was before the debate, while McCain went down the same amount.  Thirty percent said they still could change their minds.

There's lots of good evidence in the internals of the poll to indicate undecideds used the debate to learn about Obama in depth for maybe the first time.

Undecideds probably know all they need to know about McCain.  I think they're not apt to be put off by his anger, even to the point of his losing control ["That's just McCain being McCain."].

I think Obama has very good upside potential through the next two debates (and of course vicariously with the VP debate).  Of course, he can't control external events, for example, a Bush-contrived October surprise.

When Election Day comes, the remaining undecideds finally will decide.  Fear or hope.  I hope it'll be hope.  I fear it'll be fear.



McCain takes wrong lesson from Nixon meeting with Mao (bamboo - 9/27/2008 9:21:38 PM)
Absolutely agree on Mao as one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century, or of any century. I thought McCain was making the point that before Nixon met Mao, there were preliminary meetings and adequate "preparation." Problem is that in his secret trips to Beijing before Nixon's visit, Kissinger sold out Taiwan and gave assurances to Chou Enlai that weren't revealed until more than three decades later, but were handed down from president to president as official policy (see James Mann's book "The China Fantasy"). This set up a deeply compromised US-China relationship that continues to trouble us today. Hardly a good example to follow!